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ClosePSA: DO NOT use unity to make your games! Repeat, DO NOT USE UNITY! Unity just introduced a new policy that requires developers to pay a FEE of $0.20 USD to unity for every download their game gets. This includes free games and also makes the charge if a player uninstalls and reinstalls your game. So, theoretically, if someone doesn't like you they can just uninstall and reinstall your game millions of times using a bot to cause you to instantly go bankrupt. Along with that, this new policy change affects all previous games made with unity retroactively. So you know games like Hollow Knight, Risk of Rain 2, etc that were developed with unity? Well, unless they port their entire entire game to another engine before the policy goes through, they will owe unity MILLIONS based on the amount of downloads they got. This also affects all games made with the engine, regardless of it's price. So free games made with unity get completely screwed over since they usually get a ton of downloads but very few people buying MTXs. It's pure greed and makes sense since the CEO of Unity is an ex-CEO of EA who got fired from EA for being too money hungry. What is happening with all these big companies these days making the worst ever policy changes that completely kill their own brand? DO NOT develop your games with Unity. The engine is completely dead. It's over. Move to Gadot if you can. Unity just killed itself and now it will reap the consequences. I just feel bad for any developers who have games in progress or past games made with the engine... Guess Silksong is cancelled then...
Strak
1560
Except it's only for games exceeding I believe around 200k downloads and games that make over $200k in sales, and developers that have their games distributed through platforms like gamepass are not on the hook for it, in fact the distributor (in this case Microsoft) is the one footing the bill. Also, repeatedly downloaded games don't get charged.
Once again. Let's get all the facts and approach things rationally before overreacting. Platforms like this aren't as malicious as you think, and for the most part it's just business as usual. Don't buy into the outrage and hype about this. Relax. Less than 10% of all developers using these platforms are going to get charged, and of the ones that do, they can absolutely afford the very minimal fee for a free program that they used to make hundreds of thousands of dollars.
EDIT: To clarify, these are the actual terms laid out by Unity for the fees and compensation. They're actually pretty generous considering they could literally have asked for a revenue split instead. Hell, Steam forces you to pay $100 just to host your game, no matter how small it is. Also, there's nothing in here that says the fees are retroactive. Get the facts first before you get outraged.
Once again. Let's get all the facts and approach things rationally before overreacting. Platforms like this aren't as malicious as you think, and for the most part it's just business as usual. Don't buy into the outrage and hype about this. Relax. Less than 10% of all developers using these platforms are going to get charged, and of the ones that do, they can absolutely afford the very minimal fee for a free program that they used to make hundreds of thousands of dollars.
EDIT: To clarify, these are the actual terms laid out by Unity for the fees and compensation. They're actually pretty generous considering they could literally have asked for a revenue split instead. Hell, Steam forces you to pay $100 just to host your game, no matter how small it is. Also, there's nothing in here that says the fees are retroactive. Get the facts first before you get outraged.
Sidewinder
2880
author=StrakLol.
They're actually pretty generousconsidering they could literally have asked for a revenue split instead.
Strak
1560
Oh, make no mistake, it does sting for big time developers that have used the service up to this point and already pay for a pro subscription, but let's face it: the makers of Unity are business owners. They can do whatever they want with their service. If you don't like it, don't use them. Use someone else, or god forbid you learn how to make your own engine. They're under no obligation to offer anything at all, and they have every legal right to charge whatever they deem fair for their product. But my point in saying that it's generous is that the only developers actually affected by this are ones who have used their service to generate considerable profit. They're not charging some small time dev to use Unity. They easily could, but they aren't. And also, they're only charging people who's games make over $200k in revenue within 12 months. That stipulation could easily be in lifetime sales. I don't know about you, I think that's pretty lenient.
Sidewinder
2880
author=Strak
I think that's pretty lenient.
Strak, you realize literally nobody else does this, right?
Strak
1560
Oh I'm well aware. I'm not saying it's good practice. What I'm saying is this will likely not even affect 95% of all the people who use Unity, and will likely not affect anyone at all who plays unity based games. In my opinion, I think this is getting blown way out of proportion, and is largely misunderstood. And moreover, I have a background in business, so I have somewhat of a different perspective than most people. I would ask that, while I agree with your point, please take into context the full scope of what I said, not just the fact that I said I think it's "lenient." It is technically lenient in the context of the argument. Just as it's not at all lenient in the context of yours.
EDIT: The context being on how business works and the methods with which companies can seek compensation for their products, as opposed to the context being a comparable business model within the same industry. Although even that can be pretty modular when you look at services such as Spotify vs iTunes.
EDIT: Although honestly, it's a moot point. My point in replying to this at all was to diffuse an argument, not create one. If someone disagrees with me, I'm totally fine with that, but I'd rather just let it go from here.
EDIT: The context being on how business works and the methods with which companies can seek compensation for their products, as opposed to the context being a comparable business model within the same industry. Although even that can be pretty modular when you look at services such as Spotify vs iTunes.
EDIT: Although honestly, it's a moot point. My point in replying to this at all was to diffuse an argument, not create one. If someone disagrees with me, I'm totally fine with that, but I'd rather just let it go from here.
Irog
4858
author=Strak
I think that's pretty lenient.
It's probably a first measure to test how the engine users react and prepare stronger monetization rules for later.
Darken
3952
author=Strak
Oh, make no mistake, it does sting for big time developers that have used the service up to this point and already pay for a pro subscription, but let's face it: the makers of Unity are business owners. They can do whatever they want with their service. If you don't like it, don't use them. Use someone else, or god forbid you learn how to make your own engine. They're under no obligation to offer anything at all, and they have every legal right to charge whatever they deem fair for their product. But my point in saying that it's generous is that the only developers actually affected by this are ones who have used their service to generate considerable profit. They're not charging some small time dev to use Unity. They easily could, but they aren't. And also, they're only charging people who's games make over $200k in revenue within 12 months. That stipulation could easily be in lifetime sales. I don't know about you, I think that's pretty lenient.
I work at a mobile game company that employs people that has created an entire catalog of unity games, even if we switched engines, it would apply to the back catalog of games that a lot of revenue comes from (not from retroactive installs, but any installs going forward). This isn't a problem that applies to a hobbyist dev that gets 10 reviews on Steam sure, but you're largely ignorant of how much of an impact that it's having on the F2P industry that's based on spreading the games as much as possible. Every mobile game you have ever played has probably been made in Unity. Business is pretty shitty now for ad based games due to Apple changing a lot of things + inflation whatever. This is just costing money, jobs, pipeline changes for no actual good reason. My bosses are fucking pissed. The ""rational"" and ""logical"" thing to do is to fight back and not put up with this.
The nature of the install fee and whatnot makes no sense whatsoever (hard to enforce, no distinction between F2P or premium, the ToS being retroactively changed is due for a class action lawsuit). I have a friend who worked at Unity at some point and has heard worse ideas that have not come to fruition. Being the "adult in the room" about this and defending a company with insane policies is just, misguided to put it lightly. You need to broaden your perspective before you jump to platitudes.
Was... anybody even using RPG Maker Unite in the first place? It's not even listed on our engine page!
author=Darken
The nature of the install fee and whatnot makes no sense whatsoever (hard to enforce, no distinction between F2P or premium, the ToS being retroactively changed is due for a class action lawsuit). I have a friend who worked at Unity at some point and has heard worse ideas that have not come to fruition.
This is what gets me, nobody charges for installs, Unity won't revel how they even plan to track this or if they even have the means to do so, this is red flags all the way down. If they wanted to take a chunk of revenue from people that use the engine, that's one thing, at least that's easy to calculate. This "trust us, bro, we'll bill you and not screw you over" attitude from Unity is part of what's so baffling.
Red_Nova
Sir Redd of Novus: He who made Prayer of the Faithless that one time, and that was pretty dang rad! :D
9192
It literally doesn't matter how few devs are actually impacted by this. Charging for installs is greedy no matter how few people have to actually pay. That'd be like saying "I only ate 1 baby, it's not like I'm a serial baby eater." God forbid you lose your device/have it stolen/broken and now have to punish the devs for the heinous crime of wanting to keep playing their games.
It also means that distribution sites like Steam will be hesitant to allow more Unity-developed games on their platforms, since they'll be on the hook for the fee. Or maybe not. Their "clarification" follow up post didn't clarify much of anything.
There is also the breach of trust that comes with this move. Unity has now set the precedent that they can change their monetization strategy at any point to incur fees for the dumbest reasons with pathetically short notice. Studios that have been developing their games in Unity for years are now rightfully worried about what else Unity is willing to do to dick them over.
My bet is that they'll backpedal this policy to something that would still be egregious had they opened with it, but the "door in the face" effect this will have will cause more people to begrudgingly accept it because it's "not as bad as before." This is not the first time Unity has made a greedy monetization change, and it won't be the last.
It also means that distribution sites like Steam will be hesitant to allow more Unity-developed games on their platforms, since they'll be on the hook for the fee. Or maybe not. Their "clarification" follow up post didn't clarify much of anything.
There is also the breach of trust that comes with this move. Unity has now set the precedent that they can change their monetization strategy at any point to incur fees for the dumbest reasons with pathetically short notice. Studios that have been developing their games in Unity for years are now rightfully worried about what else Unity is willing to do to dick them over.
My bet is that they'll backpedal this policy to something that would still be egregious had they opened with it, but the "door in the face" effect this will have will cause more people to begrudgingly accept it because it's "not as bad as before." This is not the first time Unity has made a greedy monetization change, and it won't be the last.
Strak
1560
Let me just clarify something here, since apparently my stance was a little unclear. I am not in any way defending Unity. I think what they're doing is reprehensible and will only harm the community, and I sincerely hope they reconsider this decision. I am merely pointing out that it is ultimately their software, and when you choose to use someone else's software, you inevitably limit what control you have over what can be done with that software. The only way to have COMPLETE control is to create your own software or engine. By creating your own engine, you sacrifice time, but by using someone else's, you sacrifice control. That's all I'm saying in regards to Unity's decision.
But the main point was actually not even about the decision they made or whether or not I think it's good or bad. My point was, let's not go spreading misinformation about this. Let's get the facts. From everything I can see, nobody is going to be spending millions of dollars and going bankrupt over a game that was released years ago. Will it hurt developers? Absolutely. Should this be allowed to continue? Absolutely not. I agree with everything you guys are saying. But contributing to the spread of propaganda and misinformation is generally not a healthy or mature approach to any situation. Speak out about it, yes, but do the research first. Is that fair?
But the main point was actually not even about the decision they made or whether or not I think it's good or bad. My point was, let's not go spreading misinformation about this. Let's get the facts. From everything I can see, nobody is going to be spending millions of dollars and going bankrupt over a game that was released years ago. Will it hurt developers? Absolutely. Should this be allowed to continue? Absolutely not. I agree with everything you guys are saying. But contributing to the spread of propaganda and misinformation is generally not a healthy or mature approach to any situation. Speak out about it, yes, but do the research first. Is that fair?
Corfaisus
"It's frustrating because - as much as Corf is otherwise an irredeemable person - his 2k/3 mapping is on point." ~ psy_wombats
7874
author=Strak
I agree with everything you guys are saying. But contributing to the spread of propaganda and misinformation is generally not a healthy or mature approach to any situation. Speak out about it, yes, but do the research first. Is that fair?
NEVER!!!
In all seriousness: I've seen the whole "have you seen this guy?!" and it wasn't even that guy. I have no regret about asking for evidence that lead to correcting the narrative, especially when it became apparent that others were already spreading it.
Unity, I don't use; I know games that do (especially anything that starts with a drop down box for resolution, full screen, etc.) and I play them. If RPG Maker pulled something like this, I'd have to leave. Steam's $100 thing is already too expensive for me, and the fact that I don't see any sales revenue until I hit another threshold has soured me from operating under them again.
author=Corfaisus
NEVER!!!
In all seriousness: I've seen the whole "have you seen this guy?!" and it wasn't even that guy. I have no regret about asking for evidence that lead to correcting the narrative, especially when it became apparent that others were already spreading it.
Unity, I don't use; I know games that do (especially anything that starts with a drop down box for resolution, full screen, etc.) and I play them. If RPG Maker pulled something like this, I'd have to leave. Steam's $100 thing is already too expensive for me, and the fact that I don't see any sales revenue until I hit another threshold has soured me from operating under them again.
$100 to post your game on Steam honestly isn't that bad. If you have a working job you can pay that in a single day or less. Groceries, you know, the thing you need to live, is far more expensive. A single jar of milk, alone, is like $20. Most people pay $200+ every week for groceries. $100 is nothing and you can just post your game on itch and once you get $100 revenue you can post it on steam for no cost. Plus if you get $1000 revenue from your game on steam you get refunded the $100 investment, which if your game is $10 just means 100 sales which even the smallest devs can usually pull off if their game isn't shovelware.
Also Unity bad. Switch to Gadot if your switching off RPG Maker.
Darken
3952
Well I got curious about the actual calculations. Let's say you're using Unity Pro. And you're making F2P games.
Let's say you get 1,000,000 downloads a month. So 12 million downloads within the year. You also make a $1,000,000 in your first year (December). Due to whatever the circumstances are, but high downloads/low rev is pretty common. You meet the lifetime and year thresholds by year 2.
So lets say 500,000 dls in the first month of year 2. Just bad luck whatever,
You owe Unity 36,000 dollars. (500,000 x 0.075) Based on standard country rates because fuck it.
A month. Let's say this keeps going. Just under 500k downloads a month.
So that's 360,000 owed to Unity by end of year 2. You might not make a million dollars by the end of year 2 remember, maybe business is bad, advertising good, you only need to pass the threshold in the last year even if you make half a million in the 2nd. and 360,000 gets taken away? Cause your downloads were still good? We're not even counting the revenue share taken by the release platform, ad middleware (the ads you use to make money, the money you spend on ads to advertise the game, taxes, and the cost to even develop the game. You then compound this with multiple games draining money like this, then yeah you could very well be losing millions. A million dollars is not a lot of money to keep the lights on and employees paid. That's like what, 20 people with an average salary 50k? barring every other cost. If you make more than a million dollars on an unreal engine, you pay 5% ($50,000 lowest possible). I don't need to comment further on the comparison.
Source: https://unity.com/pricing-updates (Under: How is the Unity Runtime Fee calculated?)
https://blog.unity.com/news/plan-pricing-and-packaging-updates
Note how they used 2 million dollars revenue and a 5 Million download count for their example. Their calculation is 23k but the most important thing is they leave out the yearly detail which is potentially 282,000. If you keep deflating the revenue and increasing download count, the math does really screw you over. You could lose 100% of your revenue in extreme cases. It just doesn't scale. They make the calculation confusing, then they make example just a little bit misleading, and suddenly oh yeah if you make a couple of million dollars total getting 23k in your bill is nothing. Not misleading at all. Totally worth engaging in good faith.
If I'm wrong about any of these details, I don't care. This whole thing is designed to create confusion and have people jump through hoops to even understand how it works. They made rules, and the rules aren't fair, why be be fair to them? Why give a corporate entity the benefit of the doubt? Hashing out the details isn't productive or useful in this context.
Let's say you get 1,000,000 downloads a month. So 12 million downloads within the year. You also make a $1,000,000 in your first year (December). Due to whatever the circumstances are, but high downloads/low rev is pretty common. You meet the lifetime and year thresholds by year 2.
So lets say 500,000 dls in the first month of year 2. Just bad luck whatever,
You owe Unity 36,000 dollars. (500,000 x 0.075) Based on standard country rates because fuck it.
A month. Let's say this keeps going. Just under 500k downloads a month.
So that's 360,000 owed to Unity by end of year 2. You might not make a million dollars by the end of year 2 remember, maybe business is bad, advertising good, you only need to pass the threshold in the last year even if you make half a million in the 2nd. and 360,000 gets taken away? Cause your downloads were still good? We're not even counting the revenue share taken by the release platform, ad middleware (the ads you use to make money, the money you spend on ads to advertise the game, taxes, and the cost to even develop the game. You then compound this with multiple games draining money like this, then yeah you could very well be losing millions. A million dollars is not a lot of money to keep the lights on and employees paid. That's like what, 20 people with an average salary 50k? barring every other cost. If you make more than a million dollars on an unreal engine, you pay 5% ($50,000 lowest possible). I don't need to comment further on the comparison.
Source: https://unity.com/pricing-updates (Under: How is the Unity Runtime Fee calculated?)
https://blog.unity.com/news/plan-pricing-and-packaging-updates
Note how they used 2 million dollars revenue and a 5 Million download count for their example. Their calculation is 23k but the most important thing is they leave out the yearly detail which is potentially 282,000. If you keep deflating the revenue and increasing download count, the math does really screw you over. You could lose 100% of your revenue in extreme cases. It just doesn't scale. They make the calculation confusing, then they make example just a little bit misleading, and suddenly oh yeah if you make a couple of million dollars total getting 23k in your bill is nothing. Not misleading at all. Totally worth engaging in good faith.
If I'm wrong about any of these details, I don't care. This whole thing is designed to create confusion and have people jump through hoops to even understand how it works. They made rules, and the rules aren't fair, why be be fair to them? Why give a corporate entity the benefit of the doubt? Hashing out the details isn't productive or useful in this context.
Strak
1560
I'm actually going to redact the post I just made, because it's irrelevant. The last thing you said is kind of more to the point that I was making. Not caring about whether or not the details of what you post are accurate is the point. The first post is full of inaccuracies, such as free games getting charged, retroactive downloads getting charged, and re-downloads getting charged. Those are all false. My main point, I'll reiterate, is let's get the facts before we get outraged. I'm not saying we shouldn't be outraged over this, but let's at least make sure we're getting outraged over the right things.
Corfaisus
"It's frustrating because - as much as Corf is otherwise an irredeemable person - his 2k/3 mapping is on point." ~ psy_wombats
7874
author=KrimsonKatt
A single jar of milk, alone, is like $20.
Where? My store has listings for gallons of milk at $3.
author=KrimsonKatt
Plus if you get $1000 revenue from your game on steam you get refunded the $100 investment, which if your game is $10 just means 100 sales which even the smallest devs can usually pull off if their game isn't shovelware.
My game that I worked hard on for over half my life I priced at $5 and it didn't make $1,000 - not even close. People wait for sales of at least 50% off, meaning I'd have to sell at least 400 copies to get that thousand. By all means, give me a thousand dollars so I can get my $100 back.
It's also an RPG Maker game which is an F2P community at heart, so it's a wonder I even made one sale. You know the old saying "why buy the cow when the milk is free?" I'm the poor sap with the cow. You can get hundreds of downloads easy when people can just pick it up - those aren't sales, and when you put out your first commercial game, you'll see what that means.
You know why Youtuber and Deviantart people have Patreons? Because the former venues are free and become the ad campaigns for the latter. "Like us? Support us on Patreon."
Avee
5794
author=KrimsonKatt
Move to Gadot if you can.
author=KrimsonKatt
Switch to Gadot if your switching off RPG Maker.
I would love to have access to Gal Gadot, but it's actually called Godot, just so you know :P
AveeKrimsonKatt
Move to Gadot if you can.KrimsonKatt
Switch to Gadot if your switching off RPG Maker.
I would love to have access to Gal Gadot, but it's actually called Godot, just so you know :P
I see we're on the same wavelength.
Irog
4858
author=Strak
when you choose to use someone else's software, you inevitably limit what control you have over what can be done with that software
Incorrect !
Free software like Linux preserve the user control.
